INTERVIEW: Director Mark Armstrong on his journey into Bogosian-land
Photo: Drinking in America, directed by Mark Armstrong, stars Andre Royo. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Daniel / Provided by BBB with permission.
Mark Armstrong has been visiting the land of Eric Bogosian these past few months. For the theatrically uninitiated, Bogosian is the acclaimed playwright and monologuist behind such shows as Talk Radio and subUrbia. One of his earliest works — the one that put him on the theatrical map — is Drinking in America, which is receiving an acclaimed run, directed by Armstrong, at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City, courtesy of Audible Theater.
For the project, Armstrong, perhaps best known as the artistic director of The 24 Hour Plays, has partnered with the actor Andre Royo, know for The Wire, With Love and Truth Be Told. Performances of the extended production continue through April 13.
“Andre Royo knew my work at The 24 Hour Plays organization,” Armstrong said about the initial spark that got this production moving. The actor contacted the director in January 2022; they set up a Zoom session, and Royo relayed that he was eager to get back on stage in New York City. Armstrong’s take was that Royo, like the rest of the world, was coming out of the pandemic and wanted to change things up.
“He wanted to really realize his talent,” Armstrong said. “He said, ‘Will you make this happen for me? Will you direct it and produce it?’ And I immediately said, ‘Yes,’ and got off the Zoom and said, ‘Wow, what did I just agree to? And where am I going to start?’ But it was a really, really charmed project from the beginning.”
Royo and Armstrong took their project seriously. They both attended an artists retreat in Indiana set up by Anna Strout, and Strout’s husband, Jesse Eisenberg, eventually saw a reading that Royo performed of Bogosian’s work.
“[Eisenberg] let Audible know what we were up to, and in the meantime I had talked to some producer colleagues,” Armstrong said. “Then it all came together pretty quickly once all of those people got in place.”
Armstrong counts himself as a big fan of Bogosian’s work. He called the playwright’s oeuvre “iconic” and work that he “grew up with.” He remembers a good friend of his came to see the show, and the friend leaned over and asked whether Drinking in America was the play with the “preacher monologue.”
“I said, ‘Yeah, how do you know about that?’ He said, ‘I know about all of those monologues. Everyone does.’ So if you were someone of a certain age, that was the theater literature that you grew up wanting to be a part of, and it was the same for me and Andre,” Armstrong said. “It was the sort of idea that everybody just got on board with really, really quickly, and Eric said that he wanted the particular project to be Drinking in America, which is what you can consider his first sort of uptown solo success. He had come out of the downtown performance arts and was performing in art galleries and was making his own work with these monologues that he would write and perform, and Drinking in America put him on the map, I think, as a major playwright. This was a little before my time, but as I understand, this play, Drinking in America, was that moment, and so there were so many synergies.”
That said, Armstrong knew that he had an uphill battle. For starters, Bogosian’s plays are (in some ways) inextricably tied to their creator. Bogosian is an actor, and he performed in these monologue plays himself. Luckily, Audible stepped in and helped out.
“Every person that I talked to about it I thought it was going to be the most daunting thing in the world, but Audible Theater is able to move so quickly,” he said. “Audible is able to move fast and identify projects that they want to get into the Minetta Lane Theatre, that they want to get into the Audible audiobook library, and they were able to set this production up for us really, really quickly. I haven’t ever experienced anything where everything that seems like a hurdle we just seemed to blow through because people believed in this one-sentence pitch of: It’s an Eric Bogosian show; only it’s Andre Royo performing it.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Drinking in America, written by Eric Bogosian, directed by Mark Armstrong and starring Andre Royo, is currently playing the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City. Performances continue through April 13. Click here for more information and tickets.
Updated 3/31/23
